"Naruto dear, we need to talk about this." Kushina said softly as she saw the shadow cloaked figure of her son sat on his bed in the dark room.
Naruto didn't answer straight away, trying to get his voice under control so it didn't break and show even more weakness then she expected from him.
"What exactly is there to talk about? You both have been lying to me for years. Constantly making promises you never intended to keep, giving me false hope. You think I'm too weak to even unlock my chakra don't you…" Naruto said his voice as hollow as his gaze at he finally looked his mother in the eyes.
He watched as she flinched at each accusation as if they were physical blows, tears gathering in her eyes. But at this moment in time Naruto just couldn't bring himself to care, as much as he loved his family they had lied to him and that had truly hurt him.
Seeming to give up on the light Kushina walked into the room and sat on the bed next to him, and though she still couldn't see more than his outline Naruto could still see her perfectly in the darkness, he could see her just as clearly as if it was day.
"Naruto…we should have been straight with you when you first asked us for training, both your father and I knew from the start that we shouldn't have promised to train you. I am so sorry, we never should have lied to you. But we just couldn't…we thought if we waited until you were older it would be easier to explain things then." Kushina said quietly as she sat next to her son.
She made to rest her hand on his shoulder in comfort, but pulled back when he flinched away from her touch as if it were poison. Pulling her hand back a crushed look on her face, she instead lay her hand in her lap and looked down.
"You have to understand Naruto, with your condition it is too dangerous for you to train. I spent hours talking about this with your father and even a few Medic-nin, we even considered training you in Genjutsu at first. But simply unlocking your chakra could kill you, your body is just not strong enough for the added strain."
Naruto did understand, and though hearing that unlocking his chakra could have killed him all her words did was make him angry. After all hadn't he unlocked his chakra the day before? Sure it had been painful at first but nothing he couldn't handle.
Clenching his hands on his knees as his eyes started burning again, Naruto somehow managed to ground out his words without resorting to shouting.
"But you never even tried…never are. How do you know that it would kill me, maybe it would help with my condition. Did you ever even consider that?" Naruto said in anger as glared at his mother, finally giving into his anger.
Another flinch, followed by a deep sigh.
"We did and everyone we talked to agreed that if unlocking your chakra didn't kill you, it might help your condition. But it wasn't a risk we were willing to take, not when it could cost you your life." Kushina said in a pained voice as she tried to explain such a difficult topic to her ten year old son.
"Why was it your decision to make? If it's my life it should be up to me, not you or anyone else. If you had just believed in me I wouldn't have had to do-" Naruto began the anger not leaving him, if anything it grew in him like a ball of molten rock.
"No!"
This time it was Naruto's turn to flinch, the hard expression suddenly appeared on his mother's face stopping the words in his throat.
"Naruto no matter what you think of us at the moment, your father and I have every right to make that decision. If it's a choice between your life or your ability to use chakra there is not, and there never will be a choice. You might not understand it right now, but we could never risk losing you…not again!"
This time when Kushina reached out to him Naruto didn't move away, and was quickly pulled into a firm hug while she stroked the back of his head soothingly. They stayed like that for several minutes, neither saying anything as Naruto allowed himself to take comfort in the familiar embrace.
When they finally did separate again Naruto saw his mother had tears in her eyes, but that she also had a small smile on her lips.
"It's getting late and a lot of things have happened today, I'll let you get some rest and your birthday presents will still be downstairs tomorrow when you wake up. If we need to, we can talk more about this in the morning, but we will not change our mind on this Naruto. Unlocking your chakra is not worth risking your life over."
Naruto stayed silent as Kushina slowly stood up and left, closing the door behind her. He listened as she stood outside his door for a moment, before letting out a sigh that was muffled by the door and walking back downstairs.
Letting out a sigh of his own, Naruto lay down on his bed still clothed with one arm over his eyes as he finally let sleep take him.
...
The next morning Naruto was set to tell his family that he had unlocked his chakra, and while he knew they would be angry with him, he knew it would all be ok in the end. He had proven he wasn't as weak as they thought he was, and now they would have no choice but to train him along with both Mito and Erza.
Unfortunately while they were all sat eating dinner, both his mother and father were called for an emergency Council meeting, and had to leave before he had a chance to tell them. They had left with Kushina promising they would talk after the meeting was over, but Naruto knew from experience that these meetings could take hours.
Mito had quickly taken over the table after breakfast to work on her Seals, writing the same ones over and over again until she got it perfect before trying to do it faster. Erza had relocated herself to the training room to practice her Kenjutsu, muttering to herself about needing to work on her spear wielding skills.
With nothing else to do Naruto had decided to look through the presents he had gotten last night, but had left before opening to upset with the whole situation to stay downstairs.
Shikamaru had given him several new chess sets, each styled to look like ninja from each of the Five Great Hidden villages. Choji and his family had given him a cookbook, with hundreds of different recipes. He had even gotten a Bonsai tree from Ino and her father, along with the equipment he would need to care for it.
There were several other presents from the different clans along the same lines, all of them unsurprisingly avoiding being anything to do with Shinobi training unlike what had been given to his sisters. He did end up with a decent amount of money through, which he was sure would be useful, it wasn't surprising really there was not a whole lot known about it, so it would no doubt be difficult to buy presents for him.
When he had come to a small bundle wrapped in paper with pictures of toads on it, Naruto had debated for several minutes on just throwing it away before putting it down and ignoring it.
Then he came to the presents from his family. Mito had given him a notebook filled with blank pages of high grade paper, with Erza giving him a set of charcoal pencils for drawing. Somehow he thought it might be a cooperative gift between the two of them.
His parents had given him a framed picture of all of them together in a group, a perfect family, all them smiling at the camera. It had Naruto standing in the middle with Erza on his right and Mito on his left, both hugging his arms to themselves, huddling his smaller frame between them.
His mother and father were knelt behind them, Minato with his arm around his wife's waist and Kushina giving the peace sign, a large grin on her face as she looked into the camera.
...
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